Monthly Archives January 2011

The aroma of food can be responsible for as much as 90 percent of its flavor. Scientists now believe that human beings acquired the sense of taste as a way to avoid being poisoned.–Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation

Eating is a Multi-sensory Experience

from “Word of Mouth Blog,” The Guardian

We eat with all our senses and we are shorting ourselves if we’re not aware of the multi-sensory aspect of the eating experience. If something “looks” good, we have a tendency to think it “is” good. Of course we all know that can be true, or it can lead to disappointment if quality ingredients and craftsmanship have not gone into the final product. Just like with people, looks are not all that counts. What’s inside really does count.

This article from The Guardian of London explores this.

“We know that our enjoyment of food is about more than how it tastes…On the contrary, much research suggests that it is in fact our eyes leading the way, our tongues merely follow. ‘People’s perception is typically dominated by what their eyes see,’ writes Charles Spence, Oxford professor of experimental psychology.”

Thomas Love Peacock was born in Dorset, England in 1785 or 1786, depending on the source. He was a novelist, poet and playwright and mixed with the Romantic poets, although most of his work was satirical. He also worked for the British East India Company. He was also influenced by Percy Bisshye Shelley, who he met early in life. Peacock died in his library at Halliford-on-Thames in 1866, after refusing to leave his precious books to burn.

The Swiss food pyramid, published on 30 July 2007, is for the general population, and has quite a different slant from the new American pyramid that came out earlier this year (literally, because the new American one is vertical, while the Swiss one is horizontal, but the content also differs).

An Ode to the Kitchen Scale

As a gluten-free home cook/baker, I make substitutions all the time. Sometimes I convert a recipe from “glutenicious” (this is a word I’ve coined to express “containing gluten”) to gluten-free, and sometimes I’m just trying to find another GF flour because of the gazillion different GF ingredients available, and the one called for in the recipe doesn’t happen to be one of the myriad I keep on hand in my pantry. Everyone who cooks gluten-free is bound to be confronted with this situation, and it is natural to want to (or need to) alter recipes no matter what your specific dietary restrictions may be. In that sense, I am a recipe developer. We all are.

Culinary Chemistry: On the Technique of Brining

by Jenn Oliver

Hello and welcome to the first post of Culinary Chemistry with Jenn! I am Jenn, your resident scientist with a gluten-free husband who is curious about all things related to the how and why of cooking. Today, we’re going to talk about brining, but each post will explore a different technique or phenomenon related to cooking/baking in the kitchen. Do you have questions or are curious about a particular aspect in the kitchen? Feel free to send me an email at jennoliver@theramblingepicure.com or on our online chat to the right of the screen, or join our Community and follow the Culinary Chemistry group and forum.

Alison Harris lives in Paris and travels extensively taking photos for travel books, cookbooks, advertising campaigns, newspapers and magazines. Alison did the photography for Sophia Loren’s Recipes and Memories, as well as for for Food Wine Burgundy and Food Wine Rome. She will be contributing photos from her many food journeys and experiences. The beautiful photos in the slider at the top of the home page are Alison’s (well, I haven’t managed to get them there yet, but they will be!). She is cultured and educated and a truly gentle spirit and exhibits her art in galleries around the world. You can visit Alison’s website to see the full range of her work.

There’s a reason “Wreck-Oh!” is the irreverent nickname for Recco, the Italian Riviera’s self-styled “culinary capital” and probable birthplace of the cheese-filled delicacy focaccia con formaggio.

This once-charming seaside village was flattened by RAF and USAF bombers in an 8-month period from summer 1943 to spring 1944. The goal: blow up the railroad viaduct spanning the Recco River. The Allies ran 20 bombing raids on Recco, a small place, smaller than an American shopping mall. The effects were devastating. Only a few buildings — and the railway viaduct — were left standing. Hundreds of people died.

Age is something that doesn’t matter, unless you are a cheese.–Luis Buñuel (1900-1983)

Luis Buñel was born in 1900 in Spain. While studying at the University of Madrid, he met Salvador Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca. He later went to Paris and served as an assistant to experimental filmmaker Jean Epstein, then went on to become a major Surrealist filmmaker in his own right, first in Hollywood, and later in Mexico. He was known for having good food and drink on his sets.

2 months agoby jonell_gallowayEveryone loves salt and pepper except when it comes to their hair. Hair changes, bodies change. Our comfort zone is threatened. Our mothers didn’t teach us how to act and feel with grey hair and wrinkles. They never talked about how the transition felt. Do the rules change? Do people’s reaction to us change when white starts to show? Is that the end of our sexual attractiveness and the beginning of old age and decrepitude? In any case, I’ve decided to take the leap and blue is my theme color (to match my eyes). . . . . . #goinggray

2 months agoby jonell_gallowayThese lupini clams, brought straight from the boat in Viareggio half an hour away on the coast, were so fresh they were practically howling, and they were plumper and meatier than the often tasteless vongole veraci usually used to make spaghetti alle vongole. I much prefer them. Here I was opening them in a slow-cooked garlic, parsley and white wine broth. Once opened, I removed them and cooked the juices and broth down for 20 minutes with a bit of tomato, after which I added the almost-cooked linguine to toss it briefly with the cooking juices. This is one of

2 weeks agoby jonell_gallowayWhen I was a child, my best friend's mother painted as a hobby. I once made a silly remark that the apple in her Cézanne-like painting didn't look perfect, and she said something that changed my life. "Jonell, beauty is not about being perfect. It's about looking at the scars and imperfections and the things that don't quite fit. Beauty is in the differences." Thank you, Mrs. Miller. Ever since I can't look at an apple without thinking of Cézanne's apples. I see the beauty in the bruises, the irregular shape, the variations in color; I remember that he didn't

2 months agoby jonell_gallowayIt's time to make castagnaccio, a chestnut cake made with flour, olive oil, walnuts, and pine nuts, and manafregoli, a chestnut polenta made by cooking flour in milk, using chestnut flour from the Garfagnana in Tuscany. These dishes are best made, I'm told, with the freshly ground flour, which I can buy straight out of a jute sack at the market. It's so prized that it even has a DOP. In Lucca, chestnuts are often marked simply "neccio," the local dialect, and you also see Farina di Neccio della Garfagnana. I also used it in my Thanksgiving stuffing.⠀ .⠀ .⠀